


charcoal and salt

by heliantheae



Series: salt lines and white lies [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Family (Harry Potter) - Freeform, First Meeting, Gen, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, One Minor Demon, Pre-Relationship, Walburga Black's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 08:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17220164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliantheae/pseuds/heliantheae
Summary: Their first meeting goes something like this:“Um,” says Lucius, which is completely undignified but he’s eighteen and she’s very pretty.She looks irritated. “Who are you?”





	charcoal and salt

Miraculously, they meet by accident. This is miraculous because they’re both young, single, and from good families. People of their caliber tend to be introduced for very specific purposes. Their fathers—old school friends that haven’t seen each other in a very long time—are having a business meeting at Grimmauld Place when it happens. This is code for getting tipsy drinking expensive whiskey out of sight of their wives and reminiscing about the days before their hair was thinning, so they’re not paying much attention to what their children are up to.

Lucius excuses himself to “go to the restroom” when the two older men are on their third drink and second time through telling the same story about a night out. “Going to the restroom” is a euphemism for snooping through things he has no business snooping through. He encounters a locked and warded door shortly after beginning his tour of the Black family’s home, which is irresistible to someone as full of nosiness and lacking in common sense as he is. He undoes the wards, unlocks it, and finds that it actually is a bathroom. It’s occupied by a young blonde woman, more candles than could possibly be safe, and what appears to be a toad in a charcoal summoning circle outlined in salt.

They’re far too self-involved to realize it—not unusual for any teenager however magical they happen to be—but their lives change the second their eyes lock.

—————————

Their first meeting goes something like this:

“Um,” says Lucius, which is completely undignified but he’s eighteen and she’s very pretty. 

She looks irritated. “Who are you?”

“Lucius Malfoy,” he says and, remembering his manners, bows. 

“I’m busy, Lucius Malfoy.”

“I can see that. I’ll just—” he makes to leave.

She sighs. “You might as well stay. You’re Abraxas’s son, aren’t you? Mother said you might be here. Our fathers will be at it for ages. Can you conjure flies?”

“Flies? As in—” and here, to his horror, his mouth makes a buzzing noise completely of its own accord, “Flies?”

The girl, one of the infamous Black sisters though he’s not sure which, kindly ignores this. “Yes,” she glares at the toad. “It doesn’t like the ones I conjure. Says they taste off.”

Lucius eyes the toad, which eyes him right back with significantly more malice. “That’s not a normal toad, is it?”

“It’s a lesser demon,” she says, continuing to glare at it. “Definitely not important enough to complain about the quality of my fly conjuring.” 

“Summoning demons is illegal,” he says, then, “How many flies do you need?”

The corner of her mouth quirks up. “I think we’ll get along, Malfoy. I’m Narcissa, the youngest and prettiest Black sister.” 

“It’s a pleasure,” he says automatically. 

“I know,” Narcissa informs him, and smirks.

—————————

Lucius and his father end up staying for dinner. This is fine, because it had taken hours of flies and threats for Narcissa to convince the toad demon to part with three drops of its blood and banish it back to the plane it had come from. Lucius had worked up an appetite. He was blowing out candles and cleaning up wax drips while Narcissa removed the summoning circle when another girl poked her head into the bathroom.

“Narcissa, have you seen—” she pauses when she spots Lucius, “Evidently you have. He and his father are staying for dinner.”

This girl, presumably another of the Black sisters, is an exact replica of Narcissa except she’s a brunette. They have the same heavy-lidded gray eyes and aquiline nose. If not for the hair they’d be identical, right down to the pallor of their skin. 

“I’m Lucius,” he introduces himself.

“I’m not interested,” she says, then to Narcissa, “Try conjuring rubbing alcohol and using that to clean up the summoning circle. It works wonders.”

“That was Andromeda,” Narcissa says when the other girl is gone. “The middle sister. She’s training at St. Mungo’s to be a Healer. Our parents are horrified.”

“That’s a respectable profession though,” Lucius says cautiously.

Narcissa snorts. “It’s a profession, isn’t it? A Black woman? Work? Satan must be starting to shiver. And she’s specializing in geriatric healing, which is the most boring kind.Everyone gets old. There's nothing exciting about that.”

Andromeda’s rubbing alcohol trick works on the circle, questionable career choices or no. Lucius trails after Narcissa when she leaves the bathroom, now returned to its former spotless state. 

“When is dinner going to be?” he asks, and his stomach rumbles embarrassingly loudly as if in emphasis. 

She shrugs. “One of the house elves will let us know. I need to store this properly and then we can go downstairs and find a snack for you.”

He eyes the vial of demon’s blood she gestured with. “Do I want to know what you’re going to do with that?”

“Ignorance is both bliss and plausible deniability,” she informs him blithely.

—————————

Downstairs after she had secreted the blood away in the depths of her room, Narcissa introduces him to the rest of the Black children, which is significantly less enjoyable than consuming a plate of biscuits as he'd been hoping to do.

Lucius isn’t quite sure what to think, except that he’s grateful she seems to like him and will probably prevent her eldest sister from dismembering him, either for a potion or for fun.

“Bellatrix is really quite nice,” Narcissa assures him, perhaps catching on to his discomfort. 

Bellatrix, another carbon copy of Narcissa except for her raven black hair, smiles at him with teeth that are too sharp and numerous to be quite human. She’s cleaning her nails with a knife, and looks like she could probably eat him alive. Lucius imagines she’d probably cough up bone fragments and hair like an owl pellet when she was done, and has to suppress a shudder. 

The Black sisters, all in the same room, look rather like whatever quill had drawn them had started to run out of ink. Save for the unsettling signs of Dark Magic Bellatrix shows and Narcissa’s eyes, which are crossed slightly like a Siamese cat’s, they’re identical save for their hair. 

There are two boys in the sitting room they’re in as well. Both are younger. “This is Sirius,” Narcissa points to the older one. “My cousin. Our family’s heir.”

“Cheers, mate,” says Sirius, who is perhaps fourteen and full of the existential rage people of that age tend to stew in. 

Narcissa ignores him with an air born of long practice. “And this is his brother Regulus, the baby of the family.”

Regulus is a smaller version of Sirius, with black hair and gray eyes. None of the fading that had occurred with the sisters had happened with them. He waves at Lucius when he’s introduced.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Lucius tells them, and Bellatrix licks her lips.

Sirius looks at him with something akin to pity.

—————————

Dinner is a lively affair. Lucius inhales what might have been an entire roasted duck, a mountain of mashed potatoes, and probably too much wine to be sensible with the way the Black sisters are observing him. He takes back his initial assessment of Narcissa liking him, because she’s currently wearing the same expression a small child might when confronted with an interesting beetle. This bodes poorly for escaping whatever Bellatrix wants from him.

Sirius and his mother get into a screaming match as dessert is served. 

“You’re going to want to eat that fast,” Regulus says through a mouthful of cake, gesturing at Lucius’s own piece. “Things are going to get ugly.”

Lucius looks to where Andromeda has shoved an entire piece of cake into her mouth, manners be damned, and decides the boy is probably right. Even with prior warning, he’s only halfway done when Walburga throws a wine glass at Sirius’s head and Narcissa grabs his arm. “That’s our cue,” she says. “Regulus, come on. You don’t need to see this.” 

She steers them back into the sitting room and disappears again. Lucius and Regulus blink at each other. “Do you like Quidditch?” Regulus asks.

“Of course,” Lucius says. “I played Chaser when I was at Durmstrang.” 

“I want to play Seeker when I go to Hogwarts next fall,” Regulus tells him.

There’s another crash from somewhere in the house, followed by more shouting. It sounds like Andromeda’s voice. Lucius turns back to Regulus. “I think you’d be a good Seeker,” he says. “You’ve got the right build for it.”

Regulus nods sagely. “I know. I’m light so I’ll be able to follow the Snitch faster than the other Seeker. That’s what Andromeda says anyway. She loves Quidditch.”

“Huh,” Lucius says.

Their conversation stagnates and they sit in an uncomfortable silence that is occasionally punctured by the sound of what seems to have devolved into a duel.

—————————

Abraxas is still tipsy when they arrive home at Malfoy Manor, which is fine because Lucius’s mother is apparently still visiting Paris with her friends and isn’t around to lecture either of them. Lucius makes to escape to his suite, but his father catches his arm.

“Cygnus and I were talking,” he says.

Lucius doesn’t point out that the whole point of their trip today was for the two older men to talk, but it takes effort. His father won’t appreciate that attitude. Instead, he raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“What do you think of his girls?”

Was that a trick question? Lucius eyes his father. The Black sisters were pretty enough, but he got the feeling they were all, as his mother would put it, a handful and a half. “They seemed nice,” he hedges. 

Abraxas claps him on the shoulders. “I’m glad you feel that way, because you’re probably going to marry one of them.”

Lucius can’t say he finds this particularly shocking. It was unusual that he wasn’t arranged to be married already, having been out of school for a full year. Still, he’d been hoping his mother had looking for a nice French girl in Paris instead of just new dress robes and champagne. He would have rather liked visiting in-laws in France, especially during the winter. England, London in particular, lacked the same charm. Somehow grime and slush just weren’t appealing. 

“Not Bellatrix?” he asks hopefully, because if his fantasies regarding the south of France aren’t going to come true he at least deserves not to spend the rest of his life terrified of his wife. 

His father snorts. “I’ll see what I can do.”


End file.
